Orange-Mango-Pineapple Juice

I came across a cocktail recipe I really want to try. Unfortunately, one of the ingredients is not available at my local big-box Kroger store. Therefore, I searched the Internet to find a suitable alternative. Herein I present the recipe I created from said search. This is how I make orange-mango-pineapple juice.

As always, the recipe picture above is a 4x6 JPG. You can download it and print it on 4x6 photo paper to keep in your personal recipe box.

For equipment, you will need:

1. A blender with at least 80 fl. oz. capacity.
2. I bought this Vitamix 5200 blender (affiliate link) in October 2023, and it is working just fine.
3. A pitcher to store the finished juice.
4. Mine is this Sterilite pitcher. It is available from Amazon (affiliate link), but I usually find it cheaper at Walmart. You don't need something this large; an 82-fl.-oz. pitcher will also do the trick.

For ingredients, you will need:

1. One 10-oz. bag of frozen mango chunks.
2. One 10-oz. bag of frozen pineapple chunks.
3. One 12 fl. oz. can of frozen of orange juice.
4. Plus three 12-fl.-oz. cans of filtered water to reconstitute the orange juice.
5. I use a Pūr faucet filter (Amazon affiliate link) that takes out lead, although Target sometimes has them on sale cheaper.

Please note, you can replace any of these ingredients with fresh as you see fit. I used the frozen orange juice because it was cheaper than buying it in a bottle. Feel free to juice your own oranges. I got the frozen fruit chunks because it was more convenient than cutting everything. If you do cut from fresh, you'll need a scale to make sure you have 10 ounces of flesh from each fruit.

Put everything in the blender bottle, and blend it. Use the blender's tamper if you need to get the frozen chunks down into the blades. I only had to do that once. After that, the blender did all the work. I didn't even need to run it very long. As you can see in the picture, the finished blend will get all the way to the top of the blender bottle.

Look-wise, the original recipe is much more orange than yellow. Didn't quite nail the look, did I?

Taste-wise, YES! This is delicious. It hit the spot so well that I had a second Highball glass of the juice right away. I am planning on making it again. When I use this in the recipe, I'll put a link here. (The champagne flutes arrive on Sunday, so that is when I'll make the cocktail recipe for which I need this recipe.)

Cost-wise, this comes to about 91¢ for every measuring cup (8 fluid ounces). To get a price comparison, I searched the Internet. Turns out that Walmart carries something called Tropicana Refreshers with a mango-pineapple formula. That is $2.88 for 46 fl. oz., or 50¢ per cup. I guess I should have searched longer for the bottled stuff before turning to a recipe.

I do have to say, though, that this recipe is delicious. I'll get the bottled stuff at some point to compare the taste. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy this refreshing drink.

I was at the grocery store today, so I bought the bottled stuff. It is in the glass. The stuff I made is in the jar. Look how watery the bought stuff looks compared to the homemade stuff. The bought stuff also tastes more watered down. It is, though, a bit sweater. That is probably because the second ingredient (after water) in the bought stuff is syrup. All the "juice" in the bought bottle is reconstituted concentrate, so buying concentrated orange juice for the homemade recipe is not too far from what they did at the factory.

In an effort to get the cost of the homemade down to a comparable level as the store bought, I diluted the homemade with water at a 1:1 ratio. As you can see in the picture, the diluted homemade is still thicker than the store bought. In all honesty, I have to say that diluting the homemade has decreased its tastiness dramatically. The sugar in the store bought makes it a more palatable drink. However, one could just even out the taste by adding a little sugar to the homemade. All in all, I still prefer the homemade to the store bought. I hope y'all come to the same conclusion.